Caneel Bay Resort, St. John, US Virgin Islands – it is day #6 of our romantic 25th wedding anniversary tour of the Caribbean.  Today we spent over 2 hours hiking around Caneel Bay Resort’s 170 acres, and I thought you might enjoy a little tour.

First of all, please indulge a little of my inner Monet.  If you follow this on-line travel magazine for any length of time, you will soon learn that I enjoy adding an impressionistic flavor to some of my photographs.  This is an impression of a beautiful flowering bush we found here at Caneel Bay Resort.

Archaeologists tell us that the first people arrived on the island of St. John in 1,000 BC.  Many centuries later,  in 1493, Christopher Columbus arrived here and named this island group Once Mil Virgenes , or Eleven Thousand Virgins in honor of the feast day of St. Ursula and her 11,000 virginal hand-maidens who were martyred with her.

In 1672, the Danes settled neighboring St. Thomas, and henceforth brought centuries of struggle for identity, with skirmishes between the Danes, British, and the locals,  until the United States purchased the island, in 1917 for $25,000,000 from the Danes.

As you can see in my photograph above, the island possesses flora that are generally found in arid climates, yet, in the photograph below, we find lush greenery typical of a very wet tropical climate.

Of course, in spite of all the majestic beauty of the island of St. John, this is why millions of people flock to this island each year…

Here is a little more of my photographic floral Impressionism…

What is now The Caneel Bay Resort was once one of the island’s many sugar mills.  Here you can see ruins of a long ago sugar mill transformed into Caneel Bay Resort’s fine dining restaurant, The Equator.

We enjoyed a wonderful meal, at Caneel Bay Resort’s Equator Restaurant, of local lobster (Caribbean lobsters have no claws), and fresh grouper.  Prior to sampling the local cuisine, however, I snapped this photograph of the night’s sunset.

No Caribbean island day is complete without an evening walk on the beach.  This evening we enjoyed the gentle sound of the waves washing up on the beach, and this view of St. Thomas across the channel.

Ah!  Another day celebrated in paradise with my bride of 25 years.

We highly recommend that you consider the Caneel Bay Resort and create your own remarkable memories.